32 



describe the taste of nicotine. It shouldn't come as a surprise to 

 anyone, the Merck Index, the authoritative encyclopedia of chemi- 

 cals, describes nicotine as having an acrid, burning taste. Smokers 

 apparently do associate the burning in the throat with nicotine's 

 psychoactive effects and thus look for those sensory signals in a 

 cigarette, but nonaddictive substances have been shown to produce 

 those effects. 



Why doesn't the industry use them instead? Why is nicotine in 

 cigarettes? The research undertaken by the cigarette industry is 

 more and more resembling drug development. I mentioned earlier 

 the focus on controlling the pH of tobacco smoke because it affects 

 absorption of nicotine. The cigarette industry has also studied the 

 activity of added nicotine versus nicotine that occurs naturally and 

 it has studied the potentially beneficial effects of nicotine on anxi- 

 ety, heart rate, and behavioral performance tasks. Such research 

 on the physiological effects of an active ingredient is a standard 

 part of drug development. 



Perhaps the most striking research undertaken by the industry 

 is the quest for new nicotine-like chemicals with pnarmacological 

 properties that, and I quote from a patent, "are intended for utility 

 as potential psychotherapeutic agents." The chart shows one patent 

 that summarizes the effect of nicotine-like chemicals on 

 tranquilization, sedation, and body tone of mammals. 



Mr. Chairman, I would like to move on to the actual nicotine lev- 

 els in cigarettes. FDA laboratories measured the amount of nicotine 

 in several types of cigarettes. We analyzed three varieties of one 

 brand; for example, highest, medium, and lowest. What surprised 

 us was that the lowest one in fact had the highest concentration 

 of nicotine in the cigarettes. Let me repeat that. The lowest one in 

 fact had the highest concentration of nicotine in the cigarette. 



I have read with interest the testimony that Mr. Spears, Vice 

 Chairman of Lorillard Tobacco Company, will give this morning. 

 He states that, and I assume he is speaking for the industry, we 

 do not set nicotine levels for particular brands of cigarettes. He 

 goes on to say that nicotine levels follow the tar levels. 



The easy proof, according to Mr. Spears, is that both tar and nic- 

 otine on a sales weighted basis have decreased in the same fashion 

 and in the same amount over the years. One question: If there is 

 no manipulation of nicotine going on, why does the lowest yield cig- 

 arette I just showed you have the highest percentage of nicotine in 

 it? If Mr. Spears is right, wouldn't the lowest 5deld cigarette have 

 the lowest concentration of nicotine in it? 



Furthermore, Mr. Spears says that the fact that tar and nicotine 

 have decreased in parallel fashion over this time period, and I 

 quote, "by the same amount" indicates that there has been no ma- 

 nipulation of nicotine levels. But when you look closely at the num- 

 bers from FTC's database for tar and nicotine levels in smoke since 

 1982, the earliest year for which the FTC-computed database is 

 available, we do not see that kind of tar and nicotine content occur- 

 ring in a parallel fashion and by a proportional amount over the 

 last decade. 



Let me show you the graphs describing the nicotine and tar 

 changes from 1982 to 1991, the years for which the database is 

 available. You will see from the chart (T) that the proportional 



